Preschool health education program (PHEP): an analysis of baseline data

As part of the initial stage of a project to develop and field test a health education curriculum for preschool children, baseline data were collected for use in evaluating the impact of the curriculum as well as to determine the relationship of parental health variables and the development of children's health behavior. Mothers of 202 children, 2, 3 and 4 years of age were interviewed to determine if parental health variables were related to their children's reported practice of health and safety behaviors. The analysis showed no relationship between health related background variables, mothers' health behavior, health locus control, value placed on health and the children's practice of health and safety behavior. There was no evidence to support a parental modeling effect for children's health behavior for the subjects participating in this study. The mothers will be interviewed yearly for three more years to observe changes over time and to determine the impact of the health education intervention.